


Night Off

by julie_slamdrews



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Anne Boleyn/Catherine Parr (if you squint), Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie_slamdrews/pseuds/julie_slamdrews
Summary: Catalina is looking forward to her first night off, until she isn't. Anne provides unexpected support.
Relationships: Anne Boleyn & Catherine of Aragon
Comments: 16
Kudos: 29





	Night Off

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is only seeing the light of day thanks to CynicalRainbows, who first introduced me to the fandom, then let me talk at her endlessly about my various fic-related anxieties. You're the best fic therapist!
> 
> I think this was inspired by one of the many, many headcanons I've read over the last couple of months but I now can't find it to credit. If it's yours, sorry for the lack of credit and thank you for the inspiration.

It starts the very first night that Catalina is alone in the house.

It’s stupid because she’s been waiting for this moment for weeks, months even. Waiting for one night of peace from slamming doors and too-loud music and arguments and interruptions. One night where she can choose what to watch on the television (a minor miracle in itself) and actually get to watch it all the way through without having to leap in to mediate some petty debate over toast toppings or the correct way to clean a bathroom.

The door closes behind them for what she hopes is the final time (really Anne can’t have left anything else behind and if she has she’ll just have to live without it for a few hours) and she exhales hard. Peace and quiet at last.

The months since they all arrived in a brand new century have been fraught to say the least. Full of adjustments and new experiences and the minor matter of creating a West End show from scratch when none of them had actually known what a West End show was. There has been downtime of course, movie nights and shared meals and laughter, but alone time has been sparse to say the least.

To get it, she has usually had to leave the house, and even then she hasn’t been properly alone. London is full of people, more people than she could have ever imagined, and though they are mostly going about their own business and completely ignoring her they are still there.

So when they got into the real business of planning the show, talking about show times and production runs and so forth, she had leaped on the idea of an alternate. It had been her that had suggested they each have a designated night off, a chance to decompress away from the others (though the idea hadn’t exactly been met with any complaints).

As she’s been waiting for this for months, it’s colossally unfair that she only gets to enjoy it for a grand total of five minutes before the silence stops feeling peaceful and starts feeling lonely. She turns the television up so loud that her head starts to thump in protest, but it isn’t loud enough to drown out the voice in her head. The one that whispers that maybe they aren’t coming back. That they only gave her the first night off because they’re sick of her.

All she ever does is boss them around after all. She is the first to scold and the last to join in with anything the others might describe as ‘fun.’ She is good to have around in a crisis, even in her spiralling state she can tell that, but so is Jane and Jane is warm and friendly and nice, while she is merely competent.

She spends the evening glancing frantically at the clock every few minutes and trying and failing to concentrate on Don’t Tell the Bride. The hands crawl past 10 and then past 11, on and on until she knows they can’t be at the theatre still, that they really must have left her.

When they all pile through the door, laughing and bickering and complaining (“I’m never listening when you tell me to turn my music down again now I know this is how loud you like the TV!”), the relief is indescribable.

“Where have you been?” She snaps, hating the edge of desperation she can hear on the words. Nobody else seems to notice though, they giggle and pull faces, used by now to her treating them like unruly children (which in her defence she wouldn’t have to do if they didn’t insist on behaving like unruly children).

Cathy comes over and drapes herself into Catalina’s lap.

“We went to the pub!” She says brightly. “They had a two for one special on espresso martinis!”

Cathy’s warm weight and the pressure of arms slung around her middle help to calm her racing heart (although the voice does pop up again to whisper that they probably only went to the pub because they were having so much fun without her). She mutters that perhaps they can tell her next time so that she doesn’t worry that they’ve been kidnapped by bandits, which is met with screams of laughter and a reminder that bandits aren’t exactly a big problem in present-day London.

“But just in case,” Anne says, as she sheds her shoes and scarf and jacket into different corners of the living room. “We’ll make sure you come and meet us next time. You’d fight off bandits better than the rest of us.”

It is the sort of unexpected and bizarre compliment which Anne is fond of giving, and somehow it is exactly the right one. It chases away the last of the lingering anxiety, and she is able to laugh and agree that they’d fare much better with her than without her.

(Against bandits anyway. She doesn’t want to think about how well they’d fare without her more generally.)

***

She manages to avoid having another night off alone for a few weeks. It’s easily done, one of her main roles in the group is to solve problems after all and many of the other queens’ problems can be solved by an extra night off. Whether that’s Cathy being unable to tear herself away from her writing, Kitty being exhausted after one too many nightmares or Anna coming down with the flu, they’re all incredibly grateful. This kills two birds with one stone: she doesn’t have to face the empty house and she feels useful and important and needed.

But of course a week comes when nobody is having a crisis, and she knows it would look suspicious if she gave her night off away for no good reason. By now she has built up the fear of being alone so much that she is jittery and anxious even before the other queens leave the house. She snaps at Anne for putting the cereal box back in the cupboard empty, at Kitty for taking too long in the shower and at Cathy for looking at her slightly too presciently when she says she isn’t hungry at lunchtime.

_Now you’ve done it,_ the nasty little voice says as she sits alone in the living room, trying not to hyperventilate. _Why would they want to come back after how you’ve treated them? I’m sure your alt sings better AND is more fun to be around._

This train of thought is cut off abruptly as Anne all but falls over the threshold in her rush to get into the house.

“Forgot my…” she begins as she rushes into the living room, and then she stops dead as if held by an invisible force field as her mouth forms a silent “oh.” It might be funny to see her lost for words if the circumstances weren’t so colossally humiliating.

If she were to make a list of people she would choose to find her having a breakdown Anne would not be on it. Admittedly she isn’t sure who would. (She’d probably end up screwing the list up in frustration and determining that the best course of action was just not to have a breakdown in the first place.)

If she really had to choose somebody though, she thinks it would be somebody who exerts a calming influence. And calm is not exactly a word she usually associates with Anne.

As a case in point, she is currently bouncing from foot to foot in a manner that might reasonably be described as the opposite of calm. Anne isn’t the best at staying still at the best of times, and this must be uncomfortable for her. The two of them may not be enemies as such in this life, but she certainly wouldn’t call them friends.

Anne continues to bob on the balls of her feet like a bird preparing to take flight, face cycling from one pained expression to the next. Finally she asks (begrudgingly, Catalina is certain): “Can I help?”

“I’m fine,” Catalina snaps, although her voice betrays her by wavering dangerously on the word. She should have said that something on the television had made her emotional really, except she hasn’t actually turned it on this evening.

Anne holds up her hands defensively. “Sorry,” she says. “I can go if you want?”

It’s this that finally tips her over the edge. Anne may not be her first choice of company, but at least she’s here. But obviously she doesn’t want to be here, why would she? Catalina should let her go but she can’t she can’t she can’t….

For a while afterwards all she can focus on is the increasingly challenging task of trying to obtain enough oxygen, but she is aware that Anne doesn’t leave. Far from it in fact.

She strokes and hugs and rocks and soothes, does all the things that Catalina would do if it were one of the other queens in such a state. Except she shouldn’t _be_ in a state, that isn’t what she does, not in front of people at least.

With that thought, she comes back to herself, enough to wriggle out of Anne’s arms and swipe at her eyes. She is a Queen of England after all (she still refuses to think of that title in the past tense), and a queen’s tears should be shed sparingly and preferably when there is some benefit to the realm.

(Never mind that the others are all queens too and she has seen at least three of them cry in the last week, all in response to some internet video featuring a baby elephant learning to walk.)

Anne, meanwhile, throws herself back into the mounds of throw cushions that Kitty insisted on buying during their one and only ‘family’ shopping trip and begins to flip through the channels at such a rate that Catalina doesn’t know how she can even see what each one is showing before she dismisses it.

“Anne…” She says cautiously.

“Hmm?” Anne looks up. “Sorry, did you want to watch that?”

Catalina doesn’t know what ‘that’ might be, given that approximately seventeen channels have flashed across the screen before Anne has finished her question, but the television isn’t the issue.

“Don’t you have to be getting to the show?” She asks, keeping her breathing even with no insignificant effort.

“I texted in,” Anne says, eyes still on the screen. “While you were…you know.” She makes a vague gesture which is apparently supposed to encompass ‘making a complete fool of yourself.’

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to.” Anne flashes her a grin. “A night of work or a night of watching…” She glances briefly at the screen. “Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. No contest.”

Catalina lets her own eyes flick to the screen, where it appears that Anne has managed to find the very worst that modern entertainment has to offer. Still, company is company, even if company has a frankly appalling taste in film.

They watch in relative silence for a while (there is no complete silence when it comes to Anne, but it isn’t as if her regular commentary could ruin this film at least) and Catalina is starting to think that she’s got away with it, that they’ll be able to sweep this under the rug and go on with life as normal, or as normal as life can be when you live in a house of six reincarnated queens putting on a West End show. But Anne’s next comment isn’t about what’s happening on screen.

“The house gets quiet when there’s nobody else around.”

She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen, and her tone is as casual as if she’s still discussing the logistics of having a possessed bed in your home.

“I…” Catalina begins, then trails off, suffering from an uncharacteristic lack of words. No, that isn’t true. She has the words. She simply doesn’t want to give them voice.

“It makes sense.” Anne says, still not looking away from the utter carnage playing out on the television. “We were never really alone before, were we?”

“You may not have been,” Catalina snaps, a welcome surge of rage burning through her. Anne’s head swivels so hard on her neck that she’s in danger of giving herself whiplash, eyes huge and horrified.

“Oh…” She stammers. “I didn’t mean…didn’t think…I’m sorry.”

She sounds genuinely ashamed, and Catalina feels some of the righteous anger recede. She misses it as soon as it’s gone, of all the emotions currently swirling within her it was the easiest to deal with.

Anne’s expression, meanwhile, has gone from horrified to thoughtful. “Most of us got tossed aside in our own way,” she says after a moment, and then pulls a face. “That sounds like we’re back in the show, doesn’t it?” She puts up her fingers to make air quotes. “Quit complaining, we had it bad too! What I meant was, it wasn’t because of you. He just didn’t really _do_ loyalty.”

This is the understatement of the last five centuries, but Anne isn’t done yet.

“I know I had my part in it back then and I _am_ sorry,” she says. “But none of us would do that now. We’ll always come back.”

“You will?” Catalina really really wishes that her voice wasn’t quite so weak and pleading as she asks this.

“Obviously.” Anne actually rolls her eyes, which is oddly reassuring. “We need you. You’re the only one who knows how to get Cathy to stop writing and go to sleep, or how to make the landlord fix things or how to make the really good hot chocolate. Honestly, everything would just fall apart without you!”

This is a slightly incongruous list of positive qualities, but it seems genuine enough and Anne’s earnest expression lends it further weight. She gives a slightly shaky laugh, resists the urge to list all the reasons why everything might in fact be much better without her. She doesn’t want to give Anne any ideas.

“Thank you,” she says instead.

Anne gives her another grin and turns back to her terrible movie. Silence descends for a grand total of three minutes, before Anne breaks it again to complain that now she can’t stop thinking about hot chocolate. Another, even shorter silence ensues before she starts chanting the words “hot chocolate” to herself under her breath.

Catalina mutters about the audacity all the way to the kitchen, but secretly she’s pleased to be back on more familiar ground. She thinks Anne might know that too, which is why she only threatens to smother the younger queen in her sleep after she has been sent back to the kitchen three times, for more whipped cream and more marshmallows and ‘the good sprinkles.’

(When the other queens come back demanding to know what happened to Anne and she gives a wobbly smile and tells them she was “just feeling a bit fragile” rather than mentioning anything that actually happened, Catalina mentally retracts that threat.)

***

She thinks that might be the end of it.

Anne doesn’t bring it up again, and the rest of the queens seem to accept her version of the night’s events at face value. Cathy does show up in her room later that evening displaying a hitherto undemonstrated willingness to sleep before the small hours of the morning, but she gives a face of wide-eyed innocence when Catalina asks if Anne had sent her.

“Why would Anne have sent me?” She asks, the confusion laid on just a little too thick. “I haven’t even spoken to her this evening!”

(This is a lie, Catalina had heard them giggling together when she passed Cathy’s door on her way up, but she doesn’t press the matter. She doesn’t actually want to discuss it, after all.)

That really is the last she hears of it though, until her next night off. She feels less anxious than before, but still not quite settled. And then her phone buzzes almost as soon as the others have left the house.

It’s Anne, recounting what she thinks is ‘Jane’s Worst Pun Ever.’ It buzzes again a few minutes later, this time with a picture of ‘a particularly cute pigeon.’ And again, with a selfie ‘in case you forgot what I look like.’ And again and again and again and again.

Eventually she turns the phone face down so that she can focus on Love Island and not Anne’s endless updates, and a little while after that the buzzing stops (which is something of a relief, the show is their livelihood after all, and they’re likely to get more repeat customers without one of the queens texting through the entire performance). The thought of it makes her smile though.

Maybe she doesn’t have to worry about being left alone after all.


End file.
